Also on today’s menu:
Israel Weighs Full-Scale War Against Hamas
‘Everwinter Night’ Screening In Plymouth
Before Vampires Were Sexy
House Republicans have nominated 58-year-old Steve Scalise to succeed Kevin McCarthy as the next speaker of the House of Representatives, choosing him over Jim Jordan, 113-99, in a private party vote on October 11. Not all party members have agreed to support him in a full House vote, however.
Representative Thomas Massie told reporters that he is a “hard no” because of disagreements on how the budget should be handled and said at least 20 other Republicans also would vote against Scalise. To achieve confirmation with all House members voting, Scalise would need to receive 217 votes, and Democrats remain united behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
In addition to party divisions, Scalise faces a backlash for having attended a white supremacist meeting several years ago — he claims he did not realize the nature of the gathering at the time — and one reporter claims he once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage” — a reference to the Ku Klux Klan leader.
Democrats have said they could not support either Scalise or Jordan while they continue to maintain that Donald Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election, and with Trump supporting Jordan, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna said they do not intend to vote for Scalise.
The House is facing increasing pressure to get a speaker in place so it can act in response to Hamas militants’ attack on Israel, and the United States government still needs to have a new budget in place before it reaches a new shutdown deadline on November 17.
Israel Weighs Full-Scale War Against Hamas
Israel is preparing for a possible ground operation in Gaza in response to Hamas militants’ attack on October 7. Meanwhile, according to the United Nations, near-constant air strikes have forced some 340,000 Palestinians to flee their homes. Israel has cut off supplies of food, fuel, electricity, and medicine in Gaza.
Israel’s government is under intense public pressure to topple Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, but Thomas Friedman writes in an opinion piece for the New York Times, “What Israel’s worst enemies — Hamas and Iran — want is for Israel to invade Gaza and get enmeshed in a strategic overreach there that would make America’s entanglement in Falluja look like a children’s birthday party. We are talking house-to-house fighting that would undermine whatever sympathy Israel has garnered on the world stage, deflect world attention from the murderous regime in Tehran, and force Israel to stretch its forces to permanently occupy Gaza and the West Bank.”
He argues that persuading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from such action “will likely require some very tough love between [President Joe] Biden and Netanyahu. One must never forget that Netanyahu always seemed to prefer to deal with a Hamas that was unremittingly hostile to Israel than with its rival, the more moderate Palestinian Authority — which Netanyahu did everything he could to discredit, even though the Palestinian Authority has long worked closely with Israeli security services to keep the West Bank quiet, and Netanyahu knows it. Netanyahu has never wanted the world to believe that there are “good Palestinians” ready to live side-by-side with Israel in peace and try to nurture them.”
‘Everwinter Night’ Screening In Plymouth
Just in time for Halloween, the Flying Monkey Movie House on Main Street, Plymouth, will be offering a preview of a new suspense/horror film, “Everwinter Night”, on Friday, October 20, at 6 p.m.
Shot entirely in the Pemigewasset Valley, the film features Boston-based writer-director-actor Chris Goodwin, whose 2017 feature film, “On the 7th Date”, was named Best Feature at the Toronto Independent Film Festival; Jamie Dufault, Henry Ford Jr. in the History Channel series The Cars That Made America; Victoria Mirrer, who starred in the 2017 Stanley Cup Dunkin’ Donuts commercials and the upcoming Lifetime TV movie, “Actfame”; and McKenna Parsons, star of “Lamia”, a fantasy film inspired by Basque mythology. Former New Hampshire Theater Award nominee Chloe Couture of Newfields, who appeared in Showtime Television’s Dexter: New Blood series and in Adam Sandler’s film, “Hubie Halloween,” as well as Waterville Valley resident Sean T. Ward, executive producer of Dreamscape Productions, also star.
Produced by Dreamscape Productions and scheduled for its world premiere at the historic Cabot Theatre outside Boston on November 20, the film centers on best friends Maddy and V, who plan a relaxing vacation at a remote ski lodge. There “a group of wealthy men throw a celebration that is centuries in the making, putting the girls on a perilous path.”
General-admission tickets are available at www.flyingmonkeynh.com, and there will be a meet-and-greet with the actors and production staff after the screening.
Before Vampires Were Sexy
Stanley Stepanic has studied vampire lore for years, and he says the vampire of today is far removed from its roots in Eastern European folklore. He writes, “The first known reference to vampires appeared in written form in Old Russian in 1047, soon after Orthodox Christianity moved into Eastern Europe. The term for vampire was upir, which has uncertain origins, but its possible literal meaning was ‘the thing at the feast or sacrifice,’ referring to a potentially dangerous spiritual entity that people believed could appear at rituals for the dead. It was a euphemism used to avoid speaking the creature’s name….”
He says that, in those early days, vampires were blamed for a variety of problems, but mainly for disease. One such disease is rabies, primarily spread through biting. While its main symptom is hydrophobia, a fear of water, rabies can lead to a fear of light, altered sleep patterns, and increased aggression. Another disease associated with vampires is pellagra, brought on by diets high in corn products and alcohol. “After Europeans landed in the Americas, they transported corn back to Europe. But they ignored a key step in preparing corn: washing it, often using lime, a process called nixtamalization that can reduce the risk of pellagra,” he writes. Pellagra causes dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death, with some sufferers experiencing a high sensitivity to sunlight which leads to corpselike skin.
During the Great Vampire Epidemic that occurred between 1725 and 1755, as disease spread throughout Eastern Europe, people blamed supernatural causes and many people believed that vampires somehow continued living after death — and the only way to stop them was by attacking their corpses. During vampire burials, they would put a stake through the corpse, cover the body in garlic, and try a variety of other means to keep the dead in their graves.
Do you have a story to tell?
The News Café is a virtual meeting place where, each weekday, we discuss the news of the day: local, statewide, national, and international. Subscribers can share their knowledge, thoughts, and questions about any topic, and we may select some of those subjects for more in-depth analysis.
The News Cafe is a reader-supported publication. Although the posts are available to all subscribers at no charge, I appreciate the financial support for the time and resources it takes to do this work. Please consider “upsubscribing” to a paid subscription. Either way, thank you for being here.
Join in the conversation through chat or notes by downloading the Substack app or going to the online site.
Also see our new Substack news site, By The Way.